The Family We've Found
by Riko Ai Kumagai
Summary: Some of them hated each other at first. One was in love, two only knew hate and one didn't care. Yet. Over time they bonded and now they're a family. Time won't ever break them apart. But there are some words that might. Team Seven angst.


**DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything from this story. The characters and everything else belongs exclusively to Masashi Kishimoto-sama.**

People said often that the eyes were the window to the soul. That if you looked at the eyes of a troubled person, you could see their pain without knowing anything about them. If you looked into the eyes of a happy person, you could feel their bliss somewhere in the depths of your own soul. But for some people, their pain had belonged to them for so long that it was their life, and life was not supposed to make you feel sad. So after weeks turning into months and months to years, their eyes lost what had shown others the color of their soul.

This was true for many, but mainly Team Seven. Everyone on that team from the sensei, Kakashi, to the young kunoichi Sakura had eyes that once had told a story and now just screamed, "I've lived my life as I am. There's no use in feeling it anymore."

It wasn't clear why they'd been dealt such a hard hand. Everyone knew Sasuke's story. His brother, the prodigy, the amazing thirteen-year old ANBU squad leader, had turned back on his priveleges and killed his own clan. He'd left Sasuke to live, to live with the eyes of one haunted, and to live with the nightmares and only the dark to console him. To Sasuke, he had not failed in killing his brother. He'd simply tried a hundred ways that hadn't worked. And, as much as he refused to admit it, the darkness that had for so long consoled and tortured him like a mother with a mental problem and two personalities, had hardened him and killed him, but had brought him a best friend to endure it with even if it was just on a subconscious level. But it was funny that his best friend was his rival in the same way.

Uzumaki Naruto. So long the young child who had stood at the back of the crowd rubbing his eyes to stop the tears and calling to the people to notice him and acknowledge him, and let him know that he, too, was a member of Konoha and had a fiery will. He had been stopped, frozen in pain for so long that it killed him slowly, until finally he'd hardened himself enough to stop the crying, stop the pain and force people to acknowledge him. His first father had been Iruka-sensei, and his second, adoptive father was Kakashi-sensei. His brother was Sasuke, and his best friend was Sakura. This was his family, his saviors and his pain killers. Better than any medicine that Tsunade could have ever come up with, because there wasn't any medicine for that out-of-this-world pain called loneliness. He had been lost in that same force that had for so long held Sasuke hostage, and on his subconscious level, he'd held hands with Sasuke through it all to come out on the other side and blink in the sunlight and smile and laugh with his family.

And Sakura had dealt with her fair share of problems too, for any girl who had liked a boy that had refused to like her back should know that it was a horrible pain to be ignored by the one that you love. But you can't be sure if you love him or not, because you're not actually with them, so it still only counts as liking, no matter now strong it is. You can add as many 'reallys' as you want to to 'like', but you could never upgrade it to 'love' until you could also claim him as your boyfriend. And Sakura had fought against all the other girls in the Academy for Sasuke, and after being put in his team after over five years of liking this boy, she was certain that she could sway him for her. But he would not be distracted from his ultimate goal that so few his age understood, and that was killing his clan. More than once, Sakura had found herself bitterly reflecting on Sasuke's words, 'I will restore my clan'. _How _could Sasuke restore his clan if he was not interested in girls? But she had perservered, and she'd lost him to the darkness that he'd never made it out of like Naruto.

But she knew, even before the day Sasuke had left, that they would always have each other. After all they had shared, all they had been through, they had shown enough of their inner soul and strength to love each other as three siblings and a father, as Team Seven, for as long as they lived. The sun, Naruto, with his new joy that he'd never known before, and the dark moon that had gray clouds floating in front of it as Sasuke, and the gentle summer rain that soothed and quieted all as Sakura, and the thunder that was Kakashi, that could stop bad things but relax others at the same time. This was Team Seven, and this was the family that pain, loneliness, obsession, loss, disappointment and even time could not destroy.

_And sometimes I look at Kakashi-sensei and think, 'Is this what it's like having a dad? And I look at you and wonder if this is what it's like having a brother._

_But you cannot understand what it's like to lose those bonds. You were born without them._

_I have no one important to me. They're all already dead._

_I just want to make you happy, even if that means helping you kill your brother._

_Thank you._

The thing that was not to be forgotten was these words. These words bound them closer and drove them apart. If one thing could kill this family called Team Seven it was that. These words. This was the thing that could destroy them, and in the back of all their minds, it already had.

**((A/N: Ah...The things in italics...That's my memory of some things that were said during the show. Like, Naruto was the first quote and Sasuke was the second, and Kakashi was third with Sakura fourth. And the fifth is something they've all said at one point. The quotes are all kind of distorted, I'm sure, the episodes were waaaayy back, like in the early hundreds somewhere.))**


End file.
